Dive Brief:
- Choice Hotels International opened seven new Everhome Suites extended stay hotels this summer, entering high-barrier-to-entry markets including Southern California, the hotel company announced Wednesday.
- The hotels are located in Bozeman, Montana; San Bernardino, California; Yuma, Arizona; Newington, New Hampshire; Rochester, New York; and Somerset, New Jersey. Choice also opened an Everhome property in Ontario, Canada, amid the company’s broader international expansion.
- Further expansion of the Everhome Suites brand is on the horizon as developers remain bullish on the extended stay category amid ongoing economic volatility. Long-time Choice development partner, Highside Companies, announced last month that it secured $500 million to support its continued expansion of Everhome.
Dive Insight:
Choice has 17 Everhome hotels open, 16 under construction and 45 in the pipeline, according to the hotel company. The extended stay brand is slated to have some 25 hotels open by the end of this year.
Choice plans to take Everhome to “a range of markets nationwide, including those in high-barrier and strong growth markets,” as extended stay continues to see interest from developers, according to Ron Burgett, Choice’s senior vice president of extended stay development.
Highside, in particular, is planning approximately 35 Everhome projects, which it expects to complete in the next five years, across existing and new U.S. markets for the brand, according to an August release obtained by Hotel Dive.
The developer’s financing package, secured from affiliates of Apollo Global Management, will “allow Highside to accelerate the national rollout of our Everhome Suites development program during a time of extremely constrained growth of new extended stay hotel development,” Highside CEO Justin Roberts said in a statement.
Earlier this year, Choice CEO Patrick Pacious noted that the extended stay category would be a beacon for Choice amid economic uncertainty. Meanwhile, in a June survey by Wyndham Hotels & Resorts of owners and developers industrywide, nearly all respondents said they see opportunity in extended stay.
Extended stay hotels are also an advantageous investment for developers facing challenges at the local level, noted Phillip Powers of Paladin Equity Capital, the developer behind several of the recent Everhome Suites openings.
The new hotels “represent our continued confidence in the future of the brand and the long-term strength of the Southern California extended stay hospitality market,” despite the region’s “high land costs, complex entitlements, municipal planning, and infrastructure requirements,” Powers said in a Wednesday statement.
The recent Everhome openings come after Choice opened four brand properties in Texas and broke ground on another in Oregon earlier this year in partnership with Highside.
